It's been a while
by Borlo
Summary: John is sure Sherlock is dead, but that doesn't stop him from seeing various dead Sherlocks for those whole three years Sherlock was dead. But one day Sherlock comes back. And there's only one thing those Sherlocks didn't do. And that is talk to him.


It's been two weeks (seventeen days, four hours, and twenty-seven minutes, not that he'd ever let him know how obsessively he counted the time) since Sherlock returned. Three years (he chose not to digress to the numbers again) since Sherlock died; but somehow, he seemed quite real, __very much alive __on the couch in their flat, his pale blue dressing gown falling off his right shoulder as he got lost in his own mind.

At first, when John answered the door and his eyes lifted to see who was ringing the damn doorbell at this time of the night, he didn't expect to see a ghost.

He was angry. But__his __gaze, so calculating, _observing ___everything__, and yet somewhat scared, like he expected John to lose his mind, made anger drain from his system.

To be honest, John Watson wasn't sure the Sherlock he let in was real. The dreams, __nightmares___, _he had during the night bled into his reality in time with every dawn of the new day. John stopped paying attention to the shadows of Sherlock he saw with the corner of his eyes after three months of getting startled and turning around so fast his cup of tea fell from his hand and crashed into the floor, scattering into tiny pieces that would later slice his feet and bring him back to reality. He'd think Sherlock was there, and turn around and there he was; only he was quite sure Sherlock was not part of any zombie army.

That's what kept him from believing the Sherlock (more than one, but always only one present) he saw for those three whole years was real.

The first time, his skin had a hint of green in it, the whites of his eyes blood red, creating a shocking contrast with the pale blue of his eyes. He had a patch of scalp missing, above his left ear, and John Watson could swear that was part of Sherlock's skull he was seeing.

He knew they were not real; all of those variations of deaths Sherlock could have gone through that he saw every other day. But he still refused to see a specialist.

He never quite got out of his habit of making two cups of tea every time he was thirsty. It would have been quite hard to only make one when a blue-faced Sherlock was sitting on the couch in the living room, water seeping out of his clothes and a tiny trickle out of the left part of his lips. This was the drowned Sherlock. And while he looked a bit (just a tiny bit) better than the zombie Sherlock, he still made his hands tremble and throat close up in agony.

He knew how Sherlock died, of course. It would have been quite hard not to when he was only a few feet away from him and staring at his lifeless body, knees bucking underneath him, but he still kept running to him and he gripped his arm so hard he was sure it would bruise, just to __find that damned pulse___, _and yet to no avail. Sherlock was dead, he killed himself. But that didn't stop his mind from producing all these alternate-death Sherlocks.

Lestrade called him to a murder site two months after the real Sherlock faded out of his life. But he was coping with his death better than he expected, considering the fact that all those Sherlocks took turns in keeping him company. They would loom behind him, never speaking (he suspected it would be quite hard to do so taking into account the cause of their deaths; either that or the fact that his mind no longer remembered his voice) but their sharp gaze, so alike and yet so painfully__not his__, would show him something. Their gaze would flicker to some piece of furniture of a cup of old tea or a place on the body at a crime scene, and John would understand what he wanted to say, and deduce the murderer all alone.

The Yarders were shocked, and if Lestrade wasn't sure the first few times Sherlock inspected a crime scene he was alone, he would have started questioning whether the consulting detective had been real, or just a fraud ( the papers seemed to think that there was no way he was__not __one).

John never talked to the Sherlocks; not once. During the whole expanse of time he kept quiet, even when he was all alone with one of them and could have _vented, _the good doctor made a promise to never tell a fake Sherlock how he felt about the real one. And it seemed to work just fine.

Until the alive Sherlock appeared.

His hair was just as long but John saw that the tips of his hair had just been cut; he had longer hair until a few hours ago, and judging by the way his curls were a bit matted to his head (but that could have been because of the pouring rain) it had been at least long enough to touch his shoulder blades.

He had new cuts and bruises scattered along the expanse of skin not hidden by clothes, all of them in various different stages of healing, and he couldn't keep from wondering whether Sherlock had had at least a quiet day during those three years of his absence.

For two weeks John did not say a word, and neither did Sherlock.

He supposed he could say he was in some twisted form of shock he was suffering from that kept him from speaking, but the truth was that he was too scared to start talking, in case this Sherlock was another figment of his imagination (his mind providing that he probably got bored with the dead ones and the live one were much more entertaining to watch; he would be disgusted if that were the truth).

But silence didn't keep him from dragging Sherlock inside the flat and stitching the cuts on his body, marvelling at the feel of warm skin under his arms. He had once touched the dead Sherlocks, one by one; they were all unbearably cold, almost frozen.

It took Sherlock two weeks to finally put some order in his thoughts and speak to John. His vocal chords had been damaged a year ago during one of his encounters with Moriarty's henchmen, a thin white line on his neck, under his chin, the only evidence of that encounter. He didn't use his voice often after that, and when he did, it felt wrong on his tongue and the sound was distorted and frankly ugly and broken. He didn't know if he wanted John to hear it. But he had no choice.

The first week John stayed home and ignored all the calls he got, choosing to entertain himself by staring at Sherlock staring at the wall, never quite believing that he was real.

The second week, when he was sure Sherlock wouldn't disappear (after all, on the brief and rushed trips to the supermarket, when he returned Sherlock was still there, in the same position he left him; and he always let out a sigh of relief and made his way to the kitchen to put away the shopping. Sherlock helped him sometimes) he started going to the hospital again. He took the shortest shifts he could and always rushed back home when he was done, but he never mistreated his patients. His personal life was his personal life; he wouldn't let it affect his work.

Sherlock was always there when he returned.

The dead Sherlocks stopped making appearances two days after the real one returned. John was scared out of his mind every time he saw Sherlock sitting on the couch, only to see him hanging from the ceiling when he turned his head a bit to the right. Hanged-Sherlock always had a sick sense of humour.

On a rainy Tuesday, Sherlock took Johns hand, and silently dragged him to the couch, but instead of sitting on it, he turned his body and sat in John's armchair. He looked at John, and their gaze locked, and _John knew _ Sherlock was about to make everything change between them.

"I" Sherlock croaked, his throat dry and the sound coming out resembling the cry of a wounded animal instead of his voice. But it didn't matter now, he had to tell John everything he could. John was quite literally frozen; it wasn't the voice he was used to but he knew that it was _Sherlock's_, and no matter how many times he tried remembering how it sounded and failed, it never once sounded as perfect as it did now. It was Sherlock's voice, and that was all that counted. He smiled, but it felt wrong, and he whispered "It's been a while"; Sherlock's eyes were just as clouded with tears as John's were. He nodded.

"I'm. Sorry." it was almost silent, like an exhalation; but John heard it loud and clear, louder than his thundering heartbeat and the sound of night traffic outside.

His breath hitched, eyes filling with tears and his heart clenched so hard he vaguely thought he was going to die of a broken heart.

"John. I." Sherlock frowned, stubbornly trying to form his words and make them comprehensible. "Missed. You."

John's heart couldn't take it anymore. All those years of repressed guilt and depression and sadness and _anger_ (Why did he leave him behind dammit? Why couldn't he have just taken John with him in death!) that consumed him until he was nothing more than an empty shell, disappeared just like that, and he was left feeling _so much_ he doubted he could ever breathe again without Sherlock by his side. Tears streamed down his face, hot and dripping into his striped jumper and Sherlock tugged on his hand and he followed his lead and came closer, avoiding Sherlock's face but gaze fixed on their hands, just to make sure he wasn't insane.

"Never do this to me again, Sherlock" John whispered brokenly and hugged Sherlock with such force his lungs stopped working for a while, but then they were back on and his mind was blank and he was hugging John back just as fiercely. John wasn't staying in front of Sherlock anymore, he was _on _Sherlock; tugging at his shirt with his head propped on his left shoulder, tears soaking into the purple material, before moving to grasp the nape of his neck, tugging at the soft curly hair.

"I love. You. John Watson" His voice cracked midway, and he was surprised to find that he was so close to crying he had to close his eyes, John sobbing into his neck.

He didn't know what to do, troubled by all of the emotions he felt, but against his judgement, he kissed John's temple, his left hand stroking John's back comfortingly as he waited for the tears to stop flowing; both John's and his.

It had been three years, one month, two weeks, two days and seven hours since the sand in Sherlock's hourglass stopped moving. Incidentally, that was the last time he heard John's voice.

But right now, all that mattered was John.

They were fine; they were alive. But most of all, they were together again.


End file.
